Thanks for visiting this page but i don't write here anymore. I've moved to Medium (medium.com/shaktianspace) and i am quite regular there. Only the platform has changed. Nothing else. Thanks for your not-so-precious time :)

Wednesday, September 23, 2009

2 years of typing and listening!

Today I completed 2 years. Two years of utter delight in performing 'sleight-of-hand' that may sound frivolous to a "careerist"!

It was exactly on this day in 2007 that I started my job here at Green Point Technology Services [GPTS] as a trainee transcriber. I had failed in my fourth semester exams and was nervous but wanted to get out my house and earn money anyhow. I was an insomniac too so it helped in my job as it required nocturnal presence. I remember being so happy and excited then. The happiness gradually gave way to rationality and beckoning of reality. And that's the sad part about staying at a job where you don't know what your tomorrow is all about. Moreover, my parents hated this job of mine! For starters, business transcription is a simpleton job where you listen to an audio file on headphone and transcribe it out on MS Word document. It all depends on your English listening skill, discerning quality and typing speed. I was a bit slow initially during my training days but eventually brewed up to comfortable "finger-tapping". Today its my speed that is making me stay put in this company coz I don't see any better reason for a transcription company to hold on to a guy who hasn't promoted himself to Editor's post yet, in 2 years time!

Time flies by and we can't hold on to it but we certainly can rely a lot on our indiscreet memory. I reminisce how quickly the time has flown. Two years!! The last two years saw most of my polytechnic and college friends begin their "career" in some MNCs either in Mumbai, Pune or Bangalore. And they really tried hard to coax me out of here by using the same ole career mumbo-jumbo. I stuck to my grounds (or to my idiocracy) and here I'm still transcribing away to glory!

We all pursue happiness and for some, it has a huge price of societal bondage. Mine is a bit simpler. I don't deal with real society. I'm far happy with the virtual internet society and I can't blame anyone for being 23 years of age and having no career, girlfriend or life! But I can surely bring some perspective to the role that my current job played in three of the above mentioned arena.

I never wanted a career. I remember telling my mom that I would be a writer like Ruskin Bond after completing SSC. That was quite naïve and my parents were not too thrilled about my choice. Eventually, I packed my bag to Government Polytechnic Nashik for three years diploma. Then came back to Mumbai for Bachelors degree which still eludes me and I'm not talking about the one in Electronics. I haven't got one in Arts either though I must say I've starting in the RIGHT direction by getting enrolling in long distance B.A course! But who cares about career in a transcription industry. Everyone is so engrossed with the file and TAT and deadline and devil-knows-what that it hardly matters what field you come from (or are going to)!!!

Turning to the second topic, I never expected to have any girlfriend here at this job where females are considered RUMORS!! So that pretty much helped me keep my slate clean and title of "MOST SINGLEST GUY EVER" alive! But I must say that I was pretty blessed after meeting some like-minded friends out here who were a lot like me (but will deny it). I met Tushar (who later became my brokeback partner… not the movie kind of course!) We are mostly broke and I'm always on back of his bike. Then there were Shybu, Rojella (he keeps changing his name so I'm sticking with this one), Deeva (light-eyed wonder boy with sweaty hands and empty pants) and Aly (well his name is Alliston but I prefer Aly, nickname for Alien). All of these guys rocked on day one and still manage to do, somehow.

Thirdly, my life has been pretty much erratic, confused and sweet with lots of movies (CINEMA saved me from insanity), football (I still play bad but I'm happy with it), music (language evaporated a long time back), PC upgradation (at last I was able to do something about my piggish PC tho its not worth it… its still not kosher, nor working well), aphthous ulcers (it happens with graveyard shift dinner time), poems (I left poetry writing and now prefer one-liners which I post regularly on Facebook, Twitter and Orkut though not everything I post belongs to me…I'm a great 'copywriter' too) and yada yada yada….

Two years is not a huge number to boast of considering my dad is completing his 40th year under one hotel family but considering the job-jumping guys do around, I guess it's certainly an achievement and it's my first full-time job too. We can keep regretting the decisions we took but it hardly matters when the curtain is down. So I must say I'm pretty much elated with everything around me and I wouldn't have missed it at any given cost. GPTS rocks, my colleagues rock and foremost of all, my ignorance rocks!